The Man in the Twilight eBook

“Saner than you or me,” he said.
“You know I’d want to smile if I didn’t
know the man. But I know him, and—­but
there we all owe him a deal, we forest men. And
maybe I owe him more than anyone.”

“How’s that?”

Mr. Cantor’s question came sharply. Even
Bull, tired as he was, noted the keenly incisive tone
of it. He turned, and his steady eyes regarded
the dark face of the lumberman speculatively.
Then he smiled, and picked up his glass and drained
the remains of his whisky and soda.

“Why, he’s more power for peace with the
lumber-jacks of Quebec than if he was their trade
leader,” he said, setting his empty glass down
on the table. “We employers owe him there’s
never any sort of trouble with the boys.”

“I see.” Mr. Cantor gazed out across
the nearly empty room, and a shadowy smile haunted
his eyes. “And if there was trouble?
Could you locate him in time?”

“We shouldn’t need to. He’d
be there.”

The lumberman stirred, and persisted with curious
interest.

“But he must have a place where you folks can
get him? This coming and going. It’s
fine—­but—­”

Bull stood up and stretched himself.

“Oh, he’s got a home, all right.
It’s the forests.”

Mr. Cantor threw up his hands and laughed.

“Who is he, anyway? A sort of Wandering
Jew? A ghost? A spook? That sort of
thing beats me. He’s got to be one of the
two things. He’s either a crank—­you
say he ain’t—­or he’s dodging
daylight.”

But Bull had had enough. Deep in his heart was
a feeling that no man had any right to pry into the
life of Father Adam. Father Adam had changed
the whole course of his life. It was Father Adam
who had made possible everything he was to-day—­even
his association with Nancy McDonald. He shook
his head unsmilingly.

“Father Adam’s one good man,” he
said. “And I wouldn’t recommend anyone
to hand out anything to the contrary within hearing
of the men of the Quebec forests. Good-night.”

He strode away. And Mr. Cantor followed him,
slight and bediamonded in his evening clothes.
And somehow the dark eyes gazing on the broad back
of the man from Labrador had none of the twinkling
shrewdness the other had originally observed in them.
They were quite cold and very hard. And there
was that in them which suggested the annoyance inspired
by a long evening of effort that had ended in complete
failure.

The man’s dark, foreign-looking features had
lost every semblance of their recent good-natured
enthusiasm.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LONELY FIGURE AGAIN

The laden sled stood ready for the moment of starting
on the day’s long run. Five train dogs,
lean, powerful huskies, crouched down upon the snow.
They gave no sign beyond the alertness of their pose
and the watchfulness of their furtive eyes. Their
haunches were tucked under them. And their long,
wolfish muzzles, so indicative of their parentage,
were pressed down between great, outstretched forepaws.